


Late Dawn, Early Dusk

by vinzha



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Characters Study, Made-Up Backstory, Multi, Origin Story, Two-Shot, generally platonic, how you tag, like two one-shots, look at this messed up timeline, see it like two sides of one coin, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9696848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinzha/pseuds/vinzha
Summary: "Heroes never die, but a man may - the husk of flesh and bone decaying into the earth." "No one noticed the smoke carrying more than just bullets and bombs." A set of points, more than two, more than a hundred. But for this story, one and another is all it needs.





	1. Late Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: distortion of canon and copious amount of theorizing. Of course, the canon is so ambiguous that this might as well be an alternate reality. Excessive "poetic" (ha) repetition and over usage of third person pronouns. The usual time skips and jumps you see from me.
> 
> I hope you can enjoy.
> 
> This was inspired from Foreswear by MidwesternDuchess
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/6891316

The mere presence of life always brings death. Every beginning and each of their ends, an endless loop of parallel tangents. A brief moment, a cut of breath, one last desperate, reaching gasp.

Then silence.

-.-.-.-

\- Light -

It was a miracle, a breakthrough no one had come across in the history humankind.

Yet here Angela was, the broken pieces of a record she cared nothing for right then littered around her in shards, in the remains of hopes and dreams and goals too far away to touch. The destruction continued outside the shattered windows, a supernova with no order or color. The fire heat was white, the once spacious, caving, buckling room was black.

This is a miracle, she thought as she cradled a friend's corpse, bitter taste in the back of her tongue. Years and years of research, failures, trials and sleepless days lead to this quiet moment in the heart of a crumbling empire.

Angela Ziegler couldn't have been unhappier.

1  
-.-.-.-

Before she was Mercy, the Angel of Life, she was Angela Ziegler. Before she was Angela Ziegler, a renowned surgeon in the time of war, she was just a girl.

Mother's arms wrapped around her in a bundle of cotton; the smell of chocolate and vanilla wafting gently in the air. Hands filled with little gears and clogs; father's voice filled with smiles.

There was a time when she didn't have dreams. Dreams were not needed. Dreams were wishes unfulfilled, thoughts too afraid to be spoken, and she had everything she thought she would possibly want.

Years later, battles and wars a million life times later, she dreamed endlessly

Silence within the chaos of audio torture. Impact, bombs and bullets and shrapnel piercing wood and flesh. Then blank. A radio gone dead. Alone in a supposed shelter that saved no one but her.

War was all red and fire, blazing death on a pier made of the fallen. Before she started to heal, the girl already begun to scar, her first glimpse of global conflict at eleven years old.

As blue eyes looked at the corpse of war around her - it's gutted remains sinking in the rubble with blaring lights and sirens screeching far too late; the sky a heavy gray from ash and machinery - she dreamed: war was uglier than she had even thought.

2  
-.-.-.-

"You have saved us all."

A man, alone, died within an explosion of his own creation. A terrorists base with a few seconds of a chance. A bomb, an arm, throwing his life back, and forward as it crashed into the base.

Alone.

He saved them all.

The men and women crowded around their makeshift monument, Greg Haufman's only possessions left on a wooden table. A picture of a smiling girl, a ribbon, a book, and a small packet of cards with a queen of clubs missing.

Angela felt a piece of her break again, but this time it was somehow soft, and it radiated warmth. And she knew with the world in such a state as now, some small beauty can be found within a table holding the few items a Greg Haufman had to leave behind: memories, laughter from yesterdays, promises of home. She remembered him to be a pleasant patient and a good man. Someone everyone respected to some level, always in the background.

It was quiet in the small memorial, a small offering in the peace of that brief moment.

The feeling glowed softly. Like a fond memory. Transparent, warm, like tears spilling out of closed eyes.

3  
-.-.-.-

Thoughtfully, she took a bite out of her sandwich as she reread the letter creasing in her hands.

"Doctor Ziegler?"

"Yes?"

"There's another emergency. Doctor Engel is occupied with another case. The other soldiers' conditions are improving."

The ones still alive, anyway. Sighing quietly out her nose, Angela pushed herself up and let the letter flutter onto her desk limply before turning to the nurse. It was her break, but she knew better. Never was there a break in a times like these. It was more a matter if she was needed or not.

"Lead me to them."

Nodding, the two strode quickly to the emergency room, the nurse listing the injuries they have found so far. Angela almost didn't notice the two men and woman standing at the side of the hall way, but couldn't miss them as soon as she passed them.

They didn't have weapons. In fact, they weren't wearing armor at all. But judging by their powerful physiques and stances along with no obvious illness, in times like these, it was clear as day that they were fighters. Angela had seen more of those than she cared to remember. She had seen far more of those dead than she could forget.

Overwatch, their shirts said. She frowned lightly, but shook her head to focus back into the matter in hand. One started forward as if to stop her, but Angela continued walking, examining the clipboard the nurse presented. She vaguely heard an Arabian-accented female voice calling out an order, and the heavy footsteps stopped. Angela's shoes echoed in the muffled hall.

"Tell them to go back," she instructed the nurse briskly as they got farther away. "I don't have time for this today, and they could potentially disturb the patients."

"But Doctor -"

"They are unauthorized visitors who are currently far too close to the center of this facility. Tell them to go back."

"They came here to see you, Doctor," the nurse pleaded. Far too young and too soft to refuse requests from outsiders.

Angela sighed. "I don't have time for this," she repeated. The emergency room was five paces away from now. "Just tell them to wait outside."

And then Doctor Ziegler willed herself to forget as she entered the white doors.

4  
-.-.-.-

Reyes worked well with many weapons, she realized. Guns were his preferable type. Rifle, machine, all the fancy numbers and letters that Angela barely knew since she was the one who dug out more types of bullets than she'd seen their hosts. But his coveted form was the shotgun. Loud cracks, a powerful strike in the air, the hitched pause in between that was far more intimidating than a constant chatter.

He wielded them with the ease of someone completely within their element. Strong, power bullets that didn't just put a hole through the targets, sometimes it knocked them down, barreling through the material. His arms didn't even flinch in the aftershock, just a small flick of his hand and another shot.

Jack seemed to enjoy the rifle more, with more rounds and bullets than the shotgun. He told her the hunting rifle was the first gun he had ever seen, his father's old possession that never used anymore. He used most guns proficiently, but an ease crawls over him every time his hand touches the back of the rifle. A steady hand with sharp eyes, Angela knew he could kill people in less than two shots.

Ana was a sniper, and Angela heard that her eyes are as refined as a hawk's, her aim impeccable and confident. She knew in the moment of the kill, there is no hesitation for the older woman, since every perfect moment might last for only a few seconds. Ana didn't talk about it much, the sniping, the clean shot with a quiet exit. But the doctor knew that this job was the other woman's pride and duty. Irreplaceable.

Angela looks down at the gun, a simple pistol in her hand. She looked at the target in front of her. She wondered if this was a gun especially bought for training, or the weapon left behind by another soldier who was shot too soon by another gun. A person who wields what they would be destroyed by, perhaps another's bullet through the head or heart.

The metal felt heavy in her hand. She shot at the target, and it missed spectacularly.

Angela told herself the first thing when she gets back to the lab and finish that day's round in the clinic, she will begin designing her own weapon.

5  
-.-.-.-

She promised herself that she was alright. Convinced herself, in fact. Something Angela had to do millions of tines before with others, but usually, she was honest. A doctor should not lie to their patients.

She wondered why, even as she was convinced, that every word rang false to her own ears.

Jack visited with a smile. Ana came in with tea. Lena brought small talk, and Winston with notes, and all with the obvious intent distract. The nurses and medics were all kind, patient, watchful.

At night, when it seemed everyone else was sleeping, footsteps cut through the silence with the same crack as a trigger.

"Angela."

The woman twitched. Rarely did he use her name. Usually, it was a simple "Doc", a nickname Tracer and McCree took up sometimes as well.

"What is it Gabriel?" She tried not to sound mocking. Angela was pretty sure it didn't work.

"Getting familiar now?" He raised his brows, leaning against her desk. "After a year of 'Reyes'?"

"I guess we both had a change of heart,"she said primly, the dismissal in every pore of her voice and words.

He didn't leave.

The silence was stifling, almost suffocating. She didn't know what to say, or even if there was any more to say. Her pen stopped suddenly, and not really caring anymore, she dropped her face into her hands, rubbing her eyes and temples in vain.

"Mein Gott, Gabriel," she muttered tiredly. "Couldn't you do this tomorrow?"

"Do what?"

She glared at his mildly amused tone. "Anything, really. Leave if you're just going to just stand there. Get some sleep."

"I could say the same about you," He stood from his casual slouch and leaned over her paperwork. "What's so important that you can't sleep before three in the morning?"

"Just papers to sign, fees to look over," she said staunchly. Usually, she had more patience than this, but the strings are pulled too tight recently.

Just yesterday, she reminded herself. Yesterday. She sometimes wished her aim could have been better. Not enough. Not nearly enough to aim somewhere else, like his arms, or the gun in his hand. She would've missed. The boy would've died.

Someone else did though, a voice whispered in her head. They always had to.

"Yeah, sure. That's why this paper is already signed yet you've been staring at it for the past five minutes."

Huffing, irritated, exhausted, and completely way to gone to really care anymore, she asked, "What do you want Gabriel?"

"He was going to die. By me, by you, anyone else. You saved a life at the same time too. Don't regret it. Of you didn't, two would have been rotting instead of one."

Her head snapped up, and she stared at how blunt, straight to the point, and crass he was, which... was exactly how Reyes acted eighty-nine percent of the time. The other eleven percent was mostly anomalies.

As suddenly and it came, the tension blew out of her, and she sighed. "What do you want?" She repeated, hoping he would understand and go away.

"C'mon," He was suddenly at her side and pulling up her arm. "Go sleep."

"Wha- but - the paperwork -"

"- Could be done easily in the morning," He stated simply. "What would your patients do if their doctor is falling over her own feet while trying taking care of them?"

"That's-" As her feet locked and she stood, shaking off his hand, her head was hit with a wave of dizziness. She grimaced in discomfort. "Okay. You might be right."

"I know I am," He said shortly, with as much modesty as he ever had. Bastard had a talent in both violence and sowing and he knew. Angela still couldn't believe the things he could make with a spool of thread and some fabric

The couldn't help but smile. A lot of the time, even with his overbearing pride and confidence, he was right.

6  
-.-.-.-

"All you need is love ~ !"

Angela winced as singing burst forward into her ears, pushing as gently as she could away from the completely smashed agent. The soldier promptly toppled back in a heap, apparently now singing the alphabet

"When did anyone ever think this was a good idea?"

Jack shrugged, with a "what can you do about it" smile. Reyes grunted, "I'll admit, wasn't one of the brightest ideas we've ever had."

"Not one of the brightest? I think that getting the entire team of the best soldiers on Overwatch drunk is pretty much as dark as you can get without it being black," she sighed. "Think of all the damage their liver has now with this incident. Not to mention the usual drunk antics -"

"Loosen up Doc," Reyes scoffed, lifting his own bottle of whiskey to his lips. "No one's died yet."

Angela looked around the room. Reihnhart was passed out on the tabletop with Trouborn in a slightly more lucid, but with ultimately the same results. Tracer was, unsurprisingly, a happy drunk, with extreme cases of surprising violence and strength, demonstrated by the smashed glass bottles scattered around her, which everyone is thankfully to drunk to get up and step on. Ana is faring horribly, and Angela knew the older woman's low intake of alcohol was overcome by the need to join in to the general singing. McCree's, of course, conducting the entire choir.

Angela could continue on for hours about the scene around her, but simply sighed, sipping her own half-cup of red wine, trying to ignore the impending headache. Jack and Gabriel, on the other hand, are still closer to being sober than any of the others, and Angela wondered if it had anything to do with the strengthening of their body.

"No one has died yet," she agreed. "But someone might if I did get drunk, and couldn't perform my duties properly tomorrow when people come in with an accident of some sort." She still smiled though. Yes, drunk Overwatch agents were generally migraine inducing. But it does bring a warm glow in her stomach that has nothing to do with the wine, and definitely not with the ongoing musical session behind her.

"Don't worry Angela," Jack smiled reassuringly. "I'm sure everyone could get back on their own two feet fine tomorrow - not without a little help, of course."

The next morning, her clinic was filled with the strongest soldiers of Overwatch, all looking for a reliever of hangover from her. She grinned in amusement. She was in a rather good mood, so she said, "Why don't you ask Reyes? I'n sure he has some secret concoction for a drink. Besides, I'm busy right now"

Reyes probably wanted to deal with a dozen or so suffering soldiers even less than she did, especially on a bad day. She hummed cheerfully throughout the day as his glare bore holes into her head, and gave him a cheeky smile.

"No one has died yet, so don't kill any of them," she chirped, throwing his words into his exasperated face with just enough mirth to satisfy herself and barely less than making him explode.

He didn't kill anyone, but she thought it came pretty close with himself.

7  
-.-.-.-

"Doc, you do know that most angels don't bring humans back from the dead, right?"

Mercy looked at Reyes, brows furrowed in confusion. She had been so busy bent over her research that she didn't notice the man enter the room. "Why are you bringing this up now?"

"Look, I get this is a very big step in your whole medical science job. But some people die for a reason."

"So you'll be fine if your comrades just die when I could've found the tool to bring them back?" She shot back, anger thickening her words and sharpening her tongue. She was doing this for the people she loved, and consequently the people she knew he loved to some degree as well. "You may be my senior by many years, but I do believe bringing someone back is better than leaving them for the dead. Everyone deserves to live."

"You say this even while we're killing people from the other side?" He raised his brow.

"I joined Overwatch to save as many people as possible, Reyes. The more the better. I know I couldn't save them all."

They stood toe to toe in front of her notes and machinery, her tests and formulas and thoughts all scattered across the table with computers still working overtime. Finally, Reyes shook his head, still not backing down.

"Do what you want. Some people are good with that. But if I ever come back in a body-bag or you find my pieces somewhere on the wastelands, don't pull this shit on me. If I died, then I died for a reason. You're not using your voodoo-magic on my dead body."

"It's science," she argued, but he was already stepping away.

"Yeah, yeah," he waved a hand over his shoulder. "Make sure to go to the clinic later. Abbot's whining about a splinter or something."

His heavy boots thumped farther and farther away, and the room gradually filled again with the sound of calculations and thoughts, ideas and tests to be made, blue light of technology and stark white light suddenly blinding her even though she's been under those same lights ever since she was sixteen and a young volunteer.

Years later, when she was in a different room with the same noise vibrating the air around her, she was taken by that feeling again.

"I'm no angel," Mercy murmured quietly into nothingness, the words lost amongst the noise of her own creations.

8  
-.-.-.-

The most important thing to Angela wasn't that he had stopped talking to her. No, it wasn't as if they chatted daily. Friends, Angela would suppose so. Comrades, people who had each other's backs. He didn't exactly go to her with secrets to share, and he wasn't exactly the best person for her to engage in some relaxed small talk. It happened sometimes, but not enough for her to be overtly worried.

No, it was when he stopped listening. That's a good place to start.

Before that, Jack had been searching for him. "Where's Gabriel?" He asked, and most people would shake their heads, apologize, and go on their merry way.

Angela left the room as soon as she saw Jack in the hall way, asking left and right for his friend.

She didn't know Reyes like he did. Didn't understand his quirks, his favorite this or favorite that, and she wondered if even Jack knew all of those things, since Reyes had always been someone who was always there yet never close.

But Jack, Ana, Jesse, the three people probably the closest anyone could get to the Commander of the Blackops perhaps didn't understand one thing that Angela did. Because they weren't the one who was a scientist. And it wasn't her knowledge of the human body or anything like that.

It was her work.

Jack had always held a place in his heart for his home, the farm in Indiana where he originally wanted to go back to, yet duty pulled him away. Ana had a daughter, Parrah, whom she was proud of, loved dearly, and therefore never wanted the girl to join Overwatch. Jesse was formerly from a gang, and while he was grudgingly loyal to Overwatch at the time, his free spirit always clamored for something else, perhaps something more.

She only had her work. Reyes only had his work.

That's when she knew where he would be.

As she turned away from Jack, still searching, still trying to grasp what was happening and why his friend for many years suddenly disappeared, she hoped, prayed, dreamed that this split can be sown back together.

Of course, she also knew that it was the end. Somewhere near, somewhere in the distance called the future where many claim to predict but none could completely accept.

Angela turned, and left the hall.

The next day, when Jack asked him where he went, telling him plans and news and talking and talking to the man, Reyes stared back, eyes blank. Nodded once. Said something or other, just words of stale air.

Then he left.

9  
-.-.-.-

She ran through the collapsing skeleton of structures and mazes she had long memorized. To reach that distant hearth where she knew the impact came from, a monstrosity of a sound that called forth the reigning chaos within the headquarters. Running down the familiar halls, her wings beating and clipping against the broken walls, she made her way to the silence before her, leaving behind the gunshots and explosions for "just a moment", she told herself, to make sure there weren't any innocents trapped in the burning ruins. Before she has to return.

The room was being eaten inside out by flames that battered against the metal and wood, the entrance nearly impassable and blocked with the caved in walls. She fought her way through it, squeezing through a gap. Everywhere, the sound of death permeated like a sickness, contagious and loud. The west base was deserted, everyone else gone to fight in the east and north facilities.

Dead or gone.

In her mind, Mercy counted an hour passing since that first explosion. One hour and a second - two - since the day she knew would come ever since the graveyard.

The woman looked around, stumbling into the wreckage, and Angela stopped cold in her tracks.

An hour and four seconds. An hour and five seconds have passed since the chaos begun.

A blur coated her eyes, smearing everything into an oblivion of colors, the ringing in her ears muffling all sounds and her lungs filled to the brim. When her head came back above the waters, she held a friend in her arms, her suit stained in black and red, her staff whirring. Failing at the same time.

A silence whistled in the small moments of calm. A sort of silence that rang, the sound of a beat flat-lining, crushed by the heel of fate, under the concrete rubble, debris of stone and bits of men.

This was a miracle, she thought as the wet tracks drew fading streaks on the darkened expanse of ash and dust. Years and years of research, failures, trials and sleepless days lead to this quiet moment in the heart of a crumbling empire. A moment of success in the midst of all these failures. A desperate last minute effort to force life back into a husk that reeks of death, and she knew it was working.

Yet here she was, crying.

It was a miracle yes. She had done it. She could revive cells and reanimate the dead system of life to start turning again. Too bad that after an hour and six minutes, life will never return to it's host. The newly living cells die off silently once more. Something wrong with the genetic coding, with the delicate strands that holds the man's entire identity.

There were many other things wrong, just as important but far more obvious. The hole in his chest. The lack of breathing, lack of movement.

Was it their fate? The whole empire, to go down in flames the same way it had risen from the fire of war? A phoenix rising and falling to it's own birth?

Of course not, she told herself. Don't be silly. Just a bunch of humans with a bunch of tools on a planet in a solar system in a galaxy in pocket of the universe so far away from anything else.

His chest was a cavity of blood and meat. His face was almost unrecognizable because in the impact. She had seen worse deaths, where men and women became just hunks of flesh, strewn across the battlefield. But nothing seemed worse at the moment than seeing Gabriel Reyes dead for an hour and eight minutes with Jack Morrison no where to be found. Jack, who might be even be completely obliterated, blasted into pieces, because she knew, oh how she wished she didn't, that the two men who helped begin this order would also somehow lend a hand in ending it. And she cried for him as well.

The woman tried again, a steady stream of light continued from her staff, her knuckles turning white from holding down the metaphorical button for response on the controller of her beloved science. Even after years of being a veteran at her job, last moments still stuck to her hands and the insides of her throat, in the arteries like a parasite. Never forgotten.

Her staff stuttered. Shattered into bits of electric sparks and malfunctioning like an overheated piece of machinery it was, and she felt drained. She couldn't do it anymore.

The smoke clogs and strangles her throat. Her movements felt sluggish, and she wondered if the life is being leached out of her in the effort. The ceiling started falling, and the room by then was consumed by a fire she hadn't noticed, devouring and turning in hell. On motor reflexes, she stumbles to her feet, pushing past the broken wreckage of an entrance, collapsing to the ground.

She blacked out with her hands dug into the dirt, too tired to think or move or even say one last goodbye to two men she thought was dead forever.

The body inside the building was burning.

She woke up on a cot in her own hospital, heartbeats a steady ticking in the air, echoing her breaths.

The bodies were never found.

She remained silent.

10  
-.-.-.-

She hears about him on the news more and more now. Reports on a man more smoke than flesh, more ash than bone. Leaving behind hellish landscapes with a big pile of corpses in his wake.

Angela wasn't surprised, as more and more strange people wondering the streets, terrorists, murderers, the likes. Cities had been teeming with those for the past year or so. It felt like it had been growing ever since Overwatch's fall, and the doctor was not optimistic enough to write it off as a coincidence.

So when there were survivors found in a recent event where the killer named Reaper left behind another stain of death, Angela rushed to the site as fast as she could.

The results were disturbing. Almost frightening. Humans dying faster and faster, her healing only temporarily halting the process. Forever they were changed. There was nothing to do except wait for them to die. Angela held hands with one young boy as his face grew gaunt, sucked dry of life, asleep with eyelashes fluttering weakly against his cheekbones. He died right there in her arms.

The aftermath of those attacks by the Reaper was one if the worst things she had ever encountered. As a scientist, this phenomenon was fascinating. As a healer, the fast degeneration of cells within the survivors bodies were something she never in her life wanted to be close to. It was torture, watching, unable to do anything. She lost patients before. She understood the death of a slow exhale, the warm feeling of a freshly made corpse, of the insurmountable feeling of pain that had numbed after spending so much time in the battlefield

Reaper, she remembered the moniker. The Angle of Death. A cliche, almost cheesy yet accurate alias. And she wondered if he knew about her. Another with the identity and appearance that spoke of an almost exact opposite.

Late at nights, she worked in her lab. Testing, experimenting. Under the microscopes, cells were infested a plague of simple, quiet and direct death.

11  
-.-.-.-

\- RECALL INITIATED  
\- MERCY /ANGELA ZIEGLER/  
\- IRAQ/MID-EAST  
\- ACTIVE _

Angela looked on, a faint shock reverberating in her chest between her ribs. The soft, chiming beeps continued three times before falling silent. Somehow though, she wasn't too surprised.

Angela knew that somehow Overwatch would come back, illegally or not. With the way humanity's condition was for the past few years, Overwatch was sure to rise from its ashes, one way or another.

She just wasn't sure if it was a good thing.

Packing her Valkyrie suit and weapons inside her bag and a few clothes and money, she made her way to the door with all her materials on this trip, adrenaline completely consuming her. It was time to pay her old friends a visit.

And there she had been, finally finished with the crisis within Iraq, planning to make rounds in Africa the next day, waiting to get rest in the hospital break room for the night. Now this, interrupting her schedule and -

She turned on her Overwatch tracker, something she never could bring herself to let go, and Angela wondered if she should have. This was idiotic and fool-hardy, not to mention a crime. What about the former Overwatch soldiers that turned for the worse? She thought with a scowl. What if they now knew that the system was back and would actively hunt it down? What if -

" - re you?" A chipper, almost painfully joyful voice came suddenly from the tinny speaker. Angela hastily covered the Overwatch sign imprinted on the back and raised it to her ear.

"Winston," she intercepted shortly, briskly opening the hospital doors, briefly calling a goodbye to the bewildered receptionist. "What's going on?"

"Angela! You're here too!"

"Hello Lena," the doctor sighed, blowing her blonde hair out of her eyes, feeling it would be impolite to not at least greet the other woman.

"Overwatch is back," Winston's gruff, warm voice said, excitement but also wariness in his tone.

"Why? You were in charge of all of the data, but no one ever planned for there to be a recall. In fact, the PETRAS Act clearly stated that it was prohibited." Angela lowered her voice to a soft murmur, briskly walked to the car she rented, and slammed the door shut. She hit her back against the seat and sighed.

"The world needs us right now," his voice came. "You would know."

"Yes, I understand that. However, a sudden recall is dangerous. Overwatch was shut down for a reason. Maybe it's best it stay that way. It -"

"Angela, there was an attack today. Talon, the organization caused a lot of trouble in the past as well. They tried to take all the information about former Overwatch agents. At this point, with my location and also all the data's location compromised as well as being directly targeted even though we shut down, I believe the best course of action would be to revive Overwatch," the scientist's voice was now urgent and low, as if he was suspicious for any enemies listening.

Angela knocked her head back, completely worn out. "We'll talk about this when I get to the watchpoint."

"Angela, please tell me that you'll help us. We'll need all the people we have!" Lena chipped in. Completely on board from the very beginning, and Angela was certain that the spry woman already had a few plans in her head.

"We'll talk," Angela repeated. She clicked off and sighed a deep, bone-weary sigh. A few moments later, she started the car and drove away to the airport.

The Overwatch sign glinted silver at her from the now silent device. Even though she didn't confirm anything, she knew already that her fate was sealed. Perhaps ever since she was recruited. Perhaps from eleven years old, when war first knocked on her door. Maybe none of that even matters, since regardless, she already knew that she was an Overwatch agent.

Overwatch agent till perhaps when she dies.

"Heroes never die," she murmured, testing the old catch phrase, rolling the syllables around the sides of her tongue and teeth.

The words tasted like winter and rust.

12  
-.-.-.-

A solo medic is never a good idea, she remembered from the depths of her memory, and she cursed again. The shotguns rung again before she could round behind a wall and Mercy hissed in pain as one scraped past her shoulder, scraping off armor, cloth and flesh as pain pounded into her nerves, almost causing leg to buckle. She righted herself, telling herself she was nearing Genji and could get his assistance if she made it to the cyborg. Quickly, she sped down the hall and tried to ignore the injury for a moment, beating her wings to propel herself, turning with her caduceus blaster over her shoulder and aiming to the man's chest. The first few hit but wisps of black told a different story about the last few.

The skull mask burned white into her vision while everything else was dark. She rounded the corner quickly and was out on the roof.

She remembered her broken earpiece, left with the worst situation for both herself and the team. She couldn't keep running forever.

Dark smoke like the shadows of sand instantly reached around and pulled up in front of her, quickly forming the Reaper. He swiftly raised gun and took aim at her head, the steel glinting and cold in the air in front of her nose. She immediately readied her legs, as if some miracle could let her dodge that, and clicked her blaster on with her staff in the other hand, her mind racing with a millions ideas and thoughts and curses against herself for being so stupid on an important mission like this.

Shouldn't have went by myself, she gritted. Most agents couldn't take on a primarily offensive enemy by themselves, and yet she had to go and mess things up. I couldn't just pull Winston in the fight, she argued in her mind. He was already one against six, and without enviromental attacks like in the attack at his checkpoint, he was at a disadvantage already, and Reaper was considerably more powerful than any of those Talon agents. Even with her attack boost and heal, Winston would be better off defending himself from those six agents. The most logical solution was to lead Reaper away and find help elsewhere.

Logical yes. But still it turned out like this.

Even if she somehow could raise her staff quick enough to knock his gun away from her, he had another in hand, and could just raise it easily and kill her. This was her first time going against him one on one, after years of hearing about him on the news and months of seeing him there with the Talon organization, fighting Overwatch. She knew what his gun could cause, the damage that could take place. She had read his known records and healed those wounded by him before, both survivors and fellow Overwatch soldiers.

Her mind was dizzy from its spinning, facts and theories running in adrenaline and panic. Mercy wished her mind could slow down from its usual speed, a habit from working nearly twenty-four-seven in a hurry.

"The primary medic should not go solo," the Reaper's dark, raspy voice like quicksand, his vocal cords course as if smoke ridden, a sarcastic twinge in it, reached her numbed ears. Mercy stared in disbelief, the situation's severity already caught up and pummeling her into the rooftop.

She couldn't say anything, her throat constricting with both anger and determination. Why didn't he pull the trigger yet? To mock her until the last moments of her death? To sneer down upon her demise?

"Verfluche dich," Mercy spat, fury boiling in her veins in front of this psychopath.

"Can't speak German, but even I know what you meant to say," His voice hissed, and the words stirred something in her gut, an instinct. From his jibe about medics to his bushing off her native language. And his voice.

It took a few seconds. Mercy heard him speak before, but never directly to her. She watched Reaper's height and width, his broad shoulders up and back, his straight, twisted arm with a finger steadily on the trigger. She knew.

Angela wished she didn't.

"What happened to you?" The words pushed themselves out and splayed large and wide in the space in between them. Hanging, dangling with more unanswered questions and questionable answers.

The Reaper stiffened, his tall, dark form a rigid cut against the sun. Finally he said, with his gun still between her blue eyes, hovering on the edge of a bullet through her skull, "You tell me, Doc."

"This is not what I intended for you, Reyes. You should know that!" Angela burst out, eyes flashing and face shadowed in his towering form.

Lowly, he replied, voice thunder in a storm of night, "No. You knew exactly what you were doing."

Rage beat her body, waves of it choking her throat and rushing around the sides of her lungs. She knocked away his gun with her staff, but he didn't raise the other. Just looked at her, mask glaring, moon-less night and contempt in the dark gaps acting as his eyes.

They stood there.

It was quiet.

She looked directly into the twin abyss, staring down into holes filled with nothing. Heroes never die, but a man may - the husk of flesh and bone decaying into the earth. A man may change, ideals and hopes falling away like dead skin cells. The memories would be a separate entity, a chapter that exists for eternity from the past into the present. When the world ends, perhaps the same way it began, perhaps by the hands of what it created, a hero lasts even as the man fades into obscurity.

Heroes never die, at the price of the man's life. At the price of a man's own world. No, not just his. Many worlds, so so many, all spiralling out of control on a map in an alien language, a landscape with no real landmarks or checkpoints to notice, no handle grip to even begin to search for, to hold on to as everything else fades.

"Gabri -"

A dragon of green roared, weaving through the air and impacting into the dark of Reaper. He slowly dissolved, glare trained on her the entire time, scattering as ash in the wind. She knew that he didn't die, just as she innately knew everything was far from over, and by some fluke of fate she was still alive.

No, she quickly reminded herself. Not a fluke, but a miracle.

She's already been let down by too many so called miracles in her life to recall and hurt over. Too many to forget.

A soft voice whispered in the corners of her mind, loud in its insistence: the reason he wouldn't die, not yet, was because of her.

Angela's gut twisted, and Mercy's chest hallowed out.

"Doctor Ziegler, are you alright?" Genji's voice calmly asked her. She could barely respond. She didn't know how.

"Doctor, we need to retreat. The mission today did not qualify for the amount if resistance we encountered. We need to go back,"

"...Alright," Mercy breathed. "Let me see to your wounds as we go."

As Tracer flashed backwards into the hoverplane, Widowmaker still hot on her heels and shooting, Winston racing towards them, Mercy swore that a wisp of shadows slipped in and a flash of bone white looked over a shoulder of black at her from the other side of a sunlit building.

Bone-white. Like crescent moons and marble. Like snow at the sides of roads and broken ivory.

He was caught off guard this time by Genji's sudden attack. But next time he would be ready.

Mercy vowed to be ready as well.

Heroes never die. The words straggled across her mind. Heroes never die.

"For a price," she whispered inaudibly, her breath swept away by the engine and the wind.

She looked down at her bleeding leg, and realized she hadn't noticed the pain for a while.

13  
-.-.-.-

Angela breathed in, the sound lost in the noise outside.

Breathed out.

A small wound, no need to get overtly worried, but just irritated. Pressing her hand to her side, the bullet clattering bloodily to the ground, she gives herself a small spurt of healing before pulling back. People needed her right now. People would probably always need her, even when she wasn't there anymore.

Mercy stood up and walked towards the light leading out.

 


	2. Early Dusk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't consider this quite "finished" but I'm not really sure what to do with it. So here's what I have done. It's pretty rough and incomplete, so sorry for this burning trainwreck of something that I didn't know how to finish. I might come back and edit (revise, destroy, etc.) this in the future, when I get the inspiration.

Death never lets go of life. It's always there. Waiting. Sometimes patient, sometimes not. Yet without death, life is nothing. A bare whisper, honeyed words dipped in poison, a glint in the darkness of night.

Just void.

.-.-.-.

\- Dark -

This is death, the man thought, as he woke with his body feeling more alive than ever.

The destruction around and beneath felt like a crib to his rebirth, fire licked his sides and broken bits of ceiling blanketing his form. The shattered wood and blown-away concrete rose around in heaps and waves, the rumble of explosions and crack of bullets in the distance.

A woman he knew too well lay collapsed on the wastelands just outside of the ruins of this fire-charring room, unconscious with burns curling around her form like smoke. A miracle she survived at all.

The man felt more free than ever -invincible, burning cold, melting hot, all wrapped into one loose package -and that was more than enough proof for him to fear for his life. Flexing his hands, he watched as his skin melted away like shadows of sand, dripping in black flames, before becoming the same scarred knuckles he grew to only trust. Yet now the skin was scarred as the flesh of someone burnt forever, the gray of a corpse's body, and he knew that in all concepts and endings, he shouldn't be there at all.

He should have been free. Really, actually free, not a loosely bound package of contradictions and shouldn't-have-beens.

Looking again at the woman, a cold grip around his lungs, which itched just slightly so as if they had collected dust in his recent death, Gabriel knew why he wasn't free.

1  
.-.-.-.

Before he was Reaper, the Stealer of Souls, he was Reyes. Before he was Reyes, Commander Reyes, he was a nobody.

But to his mother, he was Gabriel. Or mijo, as she called to him in her thick accent or a soothing hand.

The main streets of L.A. were filled with glamorous lights at night. A dark walk home with with only dust in his pockets. Mamá sad, cold, and still alive. Papá sad, cold, and six-feet under. Bloody face, bloody feet, bloodier fists. The rain shower was chilling down to the bone.

Gabriel didn't have dreams. Never really did. They were useless anyway. Why dream about food falling down from the sky, like in a cartoon or a fairytale when he could go get some himself? Why waste time thinking, having useless visions for something instead of actually trying? He didn't dream. He created. He took. That was all that mattered.

These days he still didn't dream, but some nights the grown man would wake up with a knife in the ceiling and a gun in his hand.

Seventeen years old and gunfire, the sound like fireworks going off, a real popular show that the whole world watched. A letter for his grievances and a name with death written all around it. Finger on trigger, the jolt of excitement surprising him, washed away by a numbness that makes him forget.

War was all crimson and gold, muffled sounds in the backdrop of explosions. Cold, life-less red streaming from the enemy omnics and sparks flying in the clash of metal against metal against flesh. A war he had signed up for, to live the rest of his days. Go young, die young, his mother said, eyes sinking into her withered skin. The choice is yours Gabriel.

As black eyes looked at the monster of war bashing and falling around and through him - its arms streaks of gray in the sky, the smoke against a brilliant red; his blood pulsing his whole body in time with the beat of his gun, the absolute freedom and thrill planting his feet to the spot with almost a restless indecision - a reckless feeling within a boy just seventeen years old arose: war was even more beautiful than he had thought.

2  
.-.-.-.

"Get down!"

Bombs can be felt crashing into the earth like meteorites. Gunshots whizzed past over his head, and Gabriel felt himself trembling with adrenaline and burning skin. The boy turned to his left, words flying in his mouth and seventeen year old mind in an overdrive.

Then he froze as red dripped down a dark, seemingly almost bottomless hole, splattering onto the ground. The air around him scorched his senses yet his insides were lined with sudden ice.

"Johnson..."

No reply.

"Johnson!" Gabriel shook the other boy, the other's head rolling as if shaking his head. No I won't speak, his rolled back eyes and loose mouth said. You can't make me speak.

"Reyes, get the fuck back up!"

"Sir, Johnson -"

"We're in the middle of a fucking war, Reyes! Get your gun and start shooting!"

Gabriel grit his teeth and released his clenched fingers. The other boy's legs folded in and collapsed to the ground, the darkness blanketing where the body landed. This should have been in his control. He knew people were going to die. Some in the front of the battle, with a heroic flare that everyone still spoke of years later. Some silently amidst the cracking and splintering empty space in a dug out trench. But he should have pulled the boy down with him. The other's reflexes never were quite as fast as his own. He should've -

Reyes swung his gun back up and reloaded.

The dirt and gunpowder stuck an ugly taste in the back of his tongue. He never could seem to flush it out. And he also never could get quite used to it.

But Reyes did eventually succeed in ignoring it.

3  
.-.-.-.

Overwatch, his uniform said, a symbol glinting in the sun. The sunlight sweltered around him, melting the cement of the ground.

"You need to stop glaring, Reyes. People aren't ever gonna join us if you keep looking at them like that."

"Shut up Jack," he muttered. The other man laughed.

"You may be a senior officer position, and with a veteran's status, but not everyone would listen to you if you always greet them with a look as if you're gonna kill them," Ana quipped, the older woman folding her arms with a frown.

"If our goals are the same, that's not gonna matter much."

"Not everyone has a one-track mind like you Reyes," Ana rolled her eyes.

"How long is she gonna take?" The dark-skinned man grunted impatiently instead of retorting, his arms folded tightly against the front of his covered gear.

"You're being too impatient. She's one of the well known doctors in the world, perhaps even what some would consider the best. Doctor Ziegler probably does have better things to do than wait around to join our team," Jack said, almost serenely. Reyes shook his head.

Of course he knew. He reviewed all of her files before agreeing to the decision of needing a doctor in charge of the medical section of Overwatch. Their group lacks a head to support them when injuries are taken, causing more close calls and casualties than he would like. And while he understood and agreed that the famous Angela Ziegler is a good choice for the job, he was still somewhat surprised by her files.

A twenty year-old Swiss woman wasn't exactly what he envisioned when "world-class doctor" or "breakthrough on nano-biology"came into mind. Or perhaps he was biased. Maybe, since most doctors he came around wore the title "scientist" as an excuse.

Scowling, he remembered how she walked directly past them in the hallway. A nurse was trailing after, her shooting them glances as they got out of earshot.

He stepped forward with the intention of stopping her, but Ana grabbed his shoulder.

"Don't follow her," was all she said.

The nurse came back with an apologetic look and told them to wait outside if they would please, and Reyes just about skewered the young girl with a glare.

If this isn't worth my time, someone is going to pay, he thought grimly. As grimly while wearing black in ninety degrees weather.

The hospital doors opened again, and out stepped Angela Ziegler, in all her glory after having them wait two fucking hours outside. Her blonde hair was almost white in the sunlight, and her eyes were chips of ice. The woman walked straight and tall up to the three, and immediately said in a rigid, accented tone, "You will have a hard time convincing me to join Overwatch."

Jack, with his apparently gold heart, shiny and way too god damn heavy, full of this and that and family and home, smiled politely at Ziegler. "We were hoping we could do just that."

"Well then tell me. What could you hope to accomplish if I become head of the medical section?" She crossed her arms, eyes trained hard onto Jack. Reyes noticed she wore a blue turtle neck and long khaki pants under her white coat, and wondered if she was insane for wearing those clothes on a day like that.

"We were hoping you could help advance the research with your knowledge and upgrade our current medical section. It is a little behind the others," Jack replied. Reyes snorted quietly. A little behind was an understatement, the few workers there hardly knew what they were doing half the time.

Her eyes snapped to the dark-skinned man's, and her stare directed at him seemed as if it aimed to pin him down and freeze the soles of his boots to the ground. Reyes glared back, finally saying "Look, making this decision could mean saving more lives than you do now. Our technology is way faster than anything you have here and the researchers and resources are all there. Don't you think that's a good offer?"

Ziegler's eyes turned from ice into steel. "And I should take this from an organization with clearly militate purposes and didn't even bother with a decent medical group?"

"Well why do you think we're here right now?"

"I find it hard to believe that the people who has left more civilians dead at once than I've seen in years ever since the war," Angela said in the same calm voice that clattered to the ground and shook the ground.

"Amd that's why we're here," Ana jumped in, seeing the chance to save the dying chances. "To prevent that from happening again."

Ziegler's eyes moved away from them, and it seemed for a moment, she wasn't there anymore. Her stature and body did not budge, not even a twitch, but for a split second she looked far older than she really was. Then she turned back and said, "On a few conditions."

"Yes?" Jack asked.

"First, I will expect a good amount of authority on the medical section. Second, I will not participate in any research that will definitely result in a weapon used for mass destruction. Third, I want to be right next to you on the fields for any team I'm needed in." The woman looked meaningfully at Jack. "Could I obtain all of those if I join?"

Jack hesitated. "Going on the field -"

" - Is exactly what you want and we need. We'll take your conditions," Reyes interjected, and both Ana and Jack looked over at Reyes in surprise. Ziegler smiled, losing a small bit of ice.

"Very well," she turned quickly back to the hospital. "I will inform you when I make my decision."

And the she gone just as quickly as she had arrived.

Jack sighed in relief, "That went better than I expected it to."

Reyes snorted. Always the golden boy with complete trust in potential allies.

A week later, Angela Ziegler showed up with a small pack at their headquarters and an answer to their request.

4  
.-.-.-.

"Fuck, Ziegler, didn't you say you knew how to shoot?"

The woman huffed, lowering the gun. "I do. I never said I was any good."

Rubbing his face in his hand, Reyes suppressed a groan. He was so tired, with new nutcases popping up and old ones joining sporadically every few days.

"Well, you better get better if you ever wanna go into the field with this team. There are times when you have to use the gun."

"I know," Angela reloaded the gun, pointing the gun again at the target.

The first bullet missed completely, and the dark-skinned man shook his head in despair. The second bullet following soon after hit close to the center, and Reyes looked at her in slight surprise and complete exasperation that said "well couldn't you do that everytime?"

She shrugged. "I could sometimes get a few lucky shots. But that also doesn't mean I necessarily have to enjoy them."

"It's war, Doc. Other things will kill you if you don't kill them."

"Mein Gott," Angela sighed good-naturedly at his nagging, shooting him a small smile. "I already know that. Be quiet and let me practice."

Reyes finally left her to train with the gun. But not after telling her to aim for the red, not the white.

He tried not to grin when she shot him a thoroughly unamused look, and told himself that it didn't make him want to laugh.

5  
.-.-.-.

The air seemed to slow, everything cut off of circulation. He was finally out of bullets, and it was to late to reach for another gun. The finger on the trigger was curling in, ready to strike. The boy, a new recruit, trying to prove himself and going out of formation, arrogance only a sixteen year old could have, about to die.

Reyes, in that split second of noticing and realizing, counted one more young boy dead.

A crack, somehow softer than normal guns, quieter, pierced into the silence of the slow second. A hole opened up on the man's head. red dripped down a dark, seemingly bottomless hole, trickling down the side of his suit, where the armor forgot to cover, in a halting stream.

The enemy fell, his mask hiding his voice, his voice hiding in his realization.

Six feet away stood Mercy, her caduceus blaster charged and in hand, the trigger still pulled down. Her wings were blank and retracted, the shadows hiding the gold glint of her halo.

"Angela..."

Her face was as surprised as his tone. The look of shock in her darkened blue eyes and slackened jaw, with gritted teeth that said "I'm not sorry".

I'm sorry.

6  
.-.-.-.

Reyes couldn't remember the last time he had ever been drunk. It wasn't like he particularly enjoyed getting completely smashed, as McCree sometimes drowns himself in whiskey and the occasional tequila. He enjoyed a good drink, but never did he indulge.

Unless it was after an especially devastating mission. Never in his free time or even to celebrate.

To be completely honest, he was starting to forget why they were having a celebration. He supposed most have different ideas. Torbjourn would probably say something about a new invention with all the words of a mechanic and no way for Reyes to really understand him. Reignhert would perhaps say something about "It's a good time to enjoy some life before you get old!" McCree would bo doubt say something about alcohol, and then promptly drink his third bottle.

Reyes would be more inclined to the fact that there is no mission for the next few days encouraged a party of sorts. And, alright, so he's the one who stitched his own clothes and apparently had some knack for design and actual coordination, but that didn't mean he was completely on board with taking care of an entire group of the world's most promising soldiers (aka grown adults who couldn't old their shit together because of something or other in their collectively screwed up past).

While Jack did convince him that a bit of down time with team bonding (a part of Reyes is only convinced that he took amusement from his suffering), the aftermath wasn't something he signed up for.

In fact, he distinctly remembered telling Jack, "Alright. Fine. But don't expect me to clean up the mess."

He had to clean up the mess.

As he carried a thoroughly inebriated and therefore tenfold more annoying McCree (why was he always stuck with him? Just because he was the cowboy's mentor didn't mean that he had to always clean his shit up) beneath his arm, Jack waved a much too cheerful goodnight as he helped Rienhert and Ana with his shoulders and arms propping the two up. Torbourn followed behind, more conscious than most but still had a sway to his step.

"I hope you know not to just dump Jesse on his face. It would be best not to have him suffocate himself."

Reyes looked to his left and saw Angela walking a little behind him with Tracer snoring into her neck. She smiled at him, the same polite smile she did every single day without fail, and it irritated him to see it. She was the one complaining at the bar today, some rant about the consequences of the little celebration. Yet somehow she seemed almost content with the way things turned out.

"I can't make any promises, not with this idiot," He snorted, turning back to the front.

"Well, at least I could make sure on my way back from Tracer's room and see that you didn't do anything too dangerous." Her blue eyes twinkled, stars soft and dim in the night lights lining the wall.

"I do dangerous things almost daily. I think that letting McCree handle himself isn't exactly - how do you put it? - "mortal peril" for me."

"Oh?" A challenging brow, teasing, mirth lining her mouth. "So are you willing to face true mortal peril as I see it?"

"I think I can handle myself unlike McCree," Reyes slowed to a stop at a door, reaching for the keys from McCree's belt as the other man murmured in his sleep.

"Be prepared, Commander Reyes," she called as she walked further down, the shadows drawing shapes on her skin. "Be prepared."

Shaking his head, he shoved through the door with his shoulder. McCree muttered some more in his sleep. Reyes reached his bed, dumped him unceremoniously on his back before tossing the keys to the nightstand. He wrinkled his nose at the room around him. He might not color-coordinate his closet, but the cowboy's room was a complete pigsty. Shaking his head again, he locked the door from the inside before shutting it behind him, the click echoing quietly amongst the snores.

The next day, he bore holes into the side of her face from the other side of the room. Usually he wouldn't be too against shutting down people with a quick, standard deadpan look or a sarcastic quip, it just wasn't his day. It was tiring, especially from that disaster of a night, and right then and there he couldn't find another time when he was honestly fed up with his team.

The woman smiled in reply, a slow, amused grin that flashed a quick white of teeth before turning decidedly away from him with a flip of blonde hair to a groaning Ana, probably bemoaning of all the bad decisions in her old life.

Reyes didn't really find it in himself to be truly mad.

7  
.-.-.-.

Some nights, Gabriel wakes up feeling as if he had been thrown years and years back, when he spent days ( weeks, months) on top of a steel slab and the stark smell of medicine in the stale white light. Soldier enhancement, quicker, stronger, better they told him. Seventy-eight percent of failure with the result of death or crippled state. Not many people actually participating, not many that would come out still breathing.

No one came out unscathed.

Gabriel had met another boy, someone who was very different from him and in the same program a hundred other fighters joined. Still in the early stages of a soldier, eighteen, well-liked, completely naive. Son of a farmer in Indiana. Reyes saw him once and expected to never see him again.

Overwatch gave both of them purpose. Jack - as the man called himself - however wanted to go back to his home. Reyes knew as he often spun tales about lazy mornings and lively afternoons in a plantation, a spring, apple trees and sunshine. But never did he understand. How could he when he never had anything like that?

Reyes did know, however, that Jack was a base of a hero. And a friend he never thought he would have.

Reyes looked down at the reports he requested from hesitant scientists, medics, and wondered if his job as Commander in Overwatch was coming to an end since this was crazy. Insane. He didn't understand the numbers and statistics. He didn't need to, since he had been under needles and drills for a long time in the program. He had been a leader for more than half his life, and that meant he lost more lives than he'd seen survive.

"Doc," He muttered under his breath, a harsh exhale ripping through his throat. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Jack tried to - well, to do something, as he put a firm shoulder onto Reye's shoulder. "You have to understand, Reyes, she's a doctor and a scientist. This development is probably more important to her than anything she had done in her life."

"For what? Fame and pride? To satisfy her science?"

"Gabriel," his voice did not lower, or grow quieter, or louder, or even become the steel Reyes knew she had when he snapped back. It was a calm, honest fact of a voice. "You know that's not true."

Of course he did.

He looked back down at the papers and notes and results, her handwriting the same scrawled cursive he could not even hope to decipher. The scribbles danced around his mind, flitting before his eyes, and even as he keeps chasing them they grow farther and farther away.

Sometimes, he thought he knows everyone well enough to trust. Other times, he just couldn't understand them. Angela, or Jack, or everyone else he worked with in this small universe where he had put his life into it's hands. And as he hates to admit, their hands.

Yet their minds slipped away from his own like water through grasping fingers. He had always been searching yet never thought to stand still and just feel.

Somehow, Reyes knew that he never would.

"I have to go," his voice was distant, pushing past his teeth and tongue without him realizing.

"Don't be hard on her. Try to understand."

"Yeah. No. I get it," he called back absently, his feet already moving him to where he knew she would be, where she had been holed up in for the past four days, testing, holding trials and calculating life and death and the little in and outs of two concepts hardly anyone quite completely understood. Life and Death, giving and taking.

"I'm just gonna try and make her understand me."

8  
.-.-.-.

Reyes sat still on a bench when she found him, a shadowed little grove in the edges of the graveyard. The wind was loud, shaking the branches and leaves, the sun was a dull red dot above the horizon. A memorial was set before him, with neat rows of tombs amongst the trees and grass.

He heard her step softly next to him. Behind him. Around him, somehow. Her feet echoed around in the blades of grass, her stillness a presence of unsettled air.

"They're trying, you know." Her voice was a whisper, her accent softening in its quietness.

"They wouldn't have found me."

"They would've, if you let them."

The tomb stones stood in eternal silence. He sat there, with no one in particular to visit, no one specific to talk to beyond the empty grave. More than half of them empty anyway, just a name on stone.

"How did you know, then."

It should have been a question. But nothing about it was curious. Nothing was asking for anything.

She didn't answer, but he knew already. Because of his lack of anyone or anything to remember and recall, because of her thinking that he wanted to to someone to miss. But she wasn't right, he told himself. He lost that right since he first joined the army and a letter flipped open with his own hands reporting his mother's death.

"I didn't. I came here for myself," she replied.

They both only had their duty. Their line of work is all that could matter anymore. Maybe she did know. Maybe that's why she was in the graveyard, whilst Jack was probably still wandering around, optimistic heart-of-gold Jack Morrison.

Jack.

His blood simmered, an familiar sense of rage filling the vessels and veins, and he clenched his hands tightly.

"Well you better run home soon. I have the graveyard shift regardless." The words were bitter with a wry, sarcastic edge to it. He couldn't see her, not even from the corner of her eye, but he could feel the small smile. A tired, weary smile, but a smile nonetheless.

"Gabriel," she finally said softly, after a moment of loud wind and dying day. "Please understand why things happened the way they did. Jack -"

"Stop. Shut up. You the one who doesn't fucking understand." The words imploded from behind his teeth and the back of his tongue, sharp notes of resentment jutting from the letters and tone. And she didn't.

He could feel her smile slide from the barest corner of her mouth, a stiffening foot in the grass and unsettling the air around her, clenched hands wrangling the air. "Gabriel, please."

The wind grew quiet. Then silent.

"Please."

Jack Morrison was his best friend. The only person who came close to it, anyway, as Reyes would like to think. And now he had everything, Overwatch, his team, all the glory, respect, and even that little happy home in Indiana where the sun was lazy and the apples were a shiny red.

Reyes had nothing. He had nothing except for his work for so long. And then, he didn't even have that anymore.

9  
.-.-.-.

The man didn't know it then, but an hour and twenty-two minutes had passed since he died.

The destruction around and above rang in waves, a symphony to his resurrection, the smell of charred flesh a smog thick air. The shattered walls and blown-away ceilings fell away in trenches and mazes.

A woman he knew too well lay amidst the debris not twenty feet away, with scratches and ash curling around her form.

A miracle she survived at all.

He drew up to his elbows and knees, and the effort felt like carrying a mountain upon his shoulders. He knew what he had become. Gabriel knew what had happened. He wasn't stupid, and with her so close, so fucking close, he could put the pieces together.

It was just too soon. Too sudden. Reyes had prepared himself for almost anything, with his choices. Reyes had been ready to tear everything he had been working for down back to scratch, to take back his entire life he had thrown into this one goal and had watched spiral away. He had been ready to die. He had been ready with guns in hands and a cavern in his chest.

Stumbling to his feet, his head fell before his boots, and the world became a blur of colors. Falling again, he expected impact. the feeling of reality against his skin.

Instead, there was the numbing feeling of almost nothing. And he realized he couldn't feel the flames, the shards of metal and glass, he couldn't feel the pain. There was prickles of nerves, a thought that said "This exists", but another with it that hisses "It's not really there. And it doesn't even matter".

Living yet with nothing to live for. A ghost whose only difference with the dead was that he wasn't free. He had seen many men become this way before in the war. He just never expected him to be alive long enough for that to happen to him as well.

He did die though, he remembered. The fact was blurry, quiet, almost unimportant. A slow notice, a warning sign pinned up long after disaster already struck, and it was so simple to ignore when his body already knew.

Maybe he had been like those soldiers for a long time, and just didn't notice.

He exhaled, vaguely feeling his skin flaking into sand, his flesh and bones dispersing like dust shaken off of an old memories. Every particle of his body and clothes scattered into the shadows of the wind, and there was a distinct feeling of nothingness. Just darkness and space and little gaps filtering him like sand.

No one noticed the smoke carrying more than just bullets and bombs. Not when they were too busy running for their lives as the Overwatch head quarters smolders in the close horizon with the light of a sun, gray hanging low in the sky.

He woke in the back of an alleyway, somewhere far into the world, a street lamp around the corner down a tall stretch of night. The memory of long gone sirens ringing in the complete silence, the stench of garbage and spoiled food in the air. Alone. Falling apart then putting himself back together, over and over again, his matter overflowing and sucking back in time with his breathing.

He closed his eyes again, but could not sleep.

10  
.-.-.-.

He found her sometimes. Through a newspaper under trampled feet, a stray radio from an open window, the small T.Vs through a thick glass from the shop. All the while he was drifting.

Rest in Peace, the tombstones most likely said. A common and often misunderstood cliche of gravestones. Except he wasn't. In fact, he was restless, a whirling mass of nothings and ash and shadows, all the smallest pieces of the former man scattered into thin air. A phantom lurking on the edges of existence. Not really alive, not really dead.

He heard about his death. Jack Morrison's memorial. The shut down of Overwatch.

Everything was empty. Nothing. There is nothing after death.

Months later, a mercenary named Reaper emerged out of nowhere, up for hire. Shotguns, skull masks, black gear that covered his entire body like a veil. Talon symbol, a woman he used to hardly know, a woman whom an angel once cried for.

Former Overwatch members dropped like flies.

"Mercy."

Everyone knew her name. Those who knew of the woman, those who didn't. Those too young to remember a hero's face by heart, and those who remember far too much of war.

Her name to them was her wings, her halo, her outstretched hand. Her name to them was stars spinning in the summer night, dew drops of a spring morning, dandelion seeds in the autumn wind, and the numbing first flakes of snow falling through winter clouds. Her name meant tomorrows becoming yesterdays.

Mercy was the afterthought of horrors already existing. Mercy was the last resort.

They spoke of mercy in the cadences of a plea, while releasing them as freely as an advertisement for something not worth its price. The ones who spoke her name the most were the cowards that plagued the streets like ants. Screams and harsh breaths of fear in the open field of a lost battle.

"Have mercy," they plead, eyes glazed and head up. Their cracked lips prayed for a gift, a miracle, the expectation of hope. "Mercy."

One bullet through the air and their eyes were glazed in the drug of loss.

"She's not here." His skin buzzed as he took what he came to steal. "You're alone with the Reaper."

One more shot pounded into the summer night air, and mercy died upon their cracked, praying lips.

11  
.-.-.-.

He pressed the scanner to the hunk of metal, pressing the button to watch it suck all the intel for Talon.

Mostly for himself.

Because he knew Jack Morrison was still alive. He knew Ana was still a ghost somewhere in the world, Angela Ziegler still injecting needles, Mcree doing his best to fuck shit up in America, and all those names and people and faces he remembered but never really knew.

After the botched mission, the scan incomplete and his body in shards, he blew away as quickly as he had arrived.

A glimpse of Winston pressing the recall button, and he then also knew where everyone was.

He went back and said nothing.

It was no fun when a stupid monkey who sees himself as a genius fails the worst information guarding he had ever seen.

12  
.-.-.-.

He didn't notice her at first. All his focus was in the monkey, here again to prevent him from executing his plans. Guns flashing, the air slowed. Everything pulsed around him, a heart beat of the heat and sun, yet he couldn't feel anything within his own ribs.

A flash of gold and white. His eyes didn't move from the black eyes behind glasses. But he knew, in the peripheral field where everything was stuck between being real and not, she was there.

He would have forgotten her, he thought. Until her bullet hit just below his ribs. It shouldn't have surprised him, yet it still somehow did. With irony, he thought of late nights working with only a lamp for light, the dark keeping them more awake than the light.

She's gotten better at shooting, he thought. It made him want to laugh, an empty, hallowed laugh like a barren wind in the desert.

Taking out another gun, he shot after the white and gold figure. The monkey lurched forward, and was blocked by the Talon agents swarming around him. He shot again as she slipped around the wall.

Either she's also gotten better at dodging or it was a lucky slip. Regardless, Reaper thought, stalking after her, wisps of black escaping the arms of his gloves, she would die that day, by his hands. His hands clenched tighter around his guns, and again he felt that laugh pressing to the sides of his lungs.

At the end of the mission, with Widowmaker cursing in French and muttering under her breath, he looked on as the ship fleeing at top speed.

The angel was still alive.

One day, he thought. One day, she would have to die. Until that day arrives, he would be the death to her life. Until time ends for both of them.

13  
.-.-.-.

Reaper breathed out a short sigh, craning his neck and a crack popped in the stifling silence.

He breathed in.

Dropping his shotguns, the weapons clattering to the ground. Heavy, leather boots moved calmly with a small, sharp clacks in the dim silence. The man's skin and flesh slowly fizzled ash and black smoke, his dark cloak mixed with red.

The Reaper walked unhurriedly into the dark of the corrider shadows, feeling more alive than ever, even with only half.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, don't really ship this. Like, much at all. Kind of do with good fanfic and fanart but regularily? Not really.
> 
> I'll probably come back and edit this since I can already feel there are NUMEROUS mistakes. Please tell me if you saw any (or not since when I read I generally don't care for any mistakes I see and just shrug my shoulders).
> 
> Hope this wasn't too terrible!


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